Cutting Through Egoity – Adi Da Samraj – Crazy Wisdom Magazine

MASTER DA: You think of the
seventh stage of life as an ideal, a goal of life, a status
of some kind that glorifies your personality, your egoity.
It is nothing of the kind. It is a matter of responsibility.
The Teaching in its most radical form is a knife, or to use
a traditional metaphor, a diamond cutter that slices through
all of this bondage, displaces it, and allows you to exist
in the context of existence totally. That is the seventh
stage of life. The first six stages of life are not that.
They are a school of progress through and beyond the ego.
The ego ought to be cut through, undermined, cut off at its
core, at its root, and you should Stand Free, functioning in
the terms of the seventh stage of life. That is my Teaching.
That is the Way in its fullest or most radical form. The
Knee of Listening, as I indicated in the Testament,
epitomizes that radical Teaching. It accounts for each of
the progressive stages of life.

In the midst of your motives,
enquire “Avoiding relationship?” or recognize
contraction in the context of any moment in the first six
stages of life, and you should be able to be Free. If your
enquiry were true, you would cut through it all, instead of
dallying stage by stage, as if you had forever to evolve and
become responsible. If your enquiry were true, you would cut
through it all rather readily. It is not an afternoon’s work
– it is a Great Affair. However, it will not take lifetimes
or even most of your life if you are truly serious about the
matter. It should occupy you a finite number of years. Under
the best of circumstances, you would begin to be prepared
for this Realization from birth. Devotees should be
functioning in the terms of the seventh stage of life in
their maturity, in their late thirties or
forties.

As I have indicated in the Dawn
Horse Testament, there may be some individuals who
demonstrate readiness for the seventh stage practice much
more quickly, who move through the stages much more
directly, so that even in their twenties or so they may
function in the context of the seventh stage. Such great
spiritual maturity is the basic human event. It is not
something to plod toward while you spend your time giving
yourself up to your egoity stage by stage. You should use
this Teaching to cut through the self-contraction for the
sake of everyone. You should assume such responsibility,
such intensity of practice.

I take all of your impediments,
tendencies, and demand for more time into account.
Therefore, the Way accounts for all of the possibilities
that human beings may introduce into this process. The Dawn
Horse Testament is the summary of all that. As I indicated
in The Dawn Horse Testament, however, this Teaching in its
most radical form is epitomized in The Knee of Listening,
and the Way in its most radical form is what you are called
to, however it may work out in your case owing to your
slowness or tendencies or mediocrity. The Way in its most
fundamental conception is a razor, a cutting edge, that
undermines the ego directly at its root. Therefore, you
ought to be able to accomplish the Way in its fullness in a
finite period of time. If all devotees did so, the culture
of this Way would be profoundly transformed. If all of
mankind did so, not only would mankind be established in the
Great Culture of the Whole, of Reality itself, but mankind
would then be able to take responsibility for all the
terrible problems that it creates and suffers. Quite
naturally, inevitably, such an Awakened Intelligence would
immediately change the effects that mankind is creating in
its adolescent exploitation of the world and of fellow
humans. It would all cease.

For those who are up to truly
listening to and considering the Teaching, the most radical
principles of this Teaching are the core of their
consideration. The Way in its summary description accounts
for all the limitations that any individual may bring to
this consideration, but in its most fundamental form the
Teaching is radical and is about cutting through the
limitations of this man-mind directly and even quickly. You
all are proposing to spend lifetimes dabbling in spiritual
life and are even willing to spend the rest of this life
settling for something that does not amount to much more
than civic religion, consoling beliefs – the sort of stuff
that can pad this suffering egoity – whereas egoity itself
must be undermined! Cut through! All the mind built on it
must be transformed by that understanding.

I consider the progress of this
practice stage by stage. On the other hand, you must look at
yourself in any stage and pass through these stages – either
simply surrender to the Divine Condition or, via
understanding, enquiry, and Recognition, cut through them in
this most radical sense. Either approach is fine. They are
equally direct if they are done most profoundly. [Master
Da snaps His fingers several times.] Pass through these
stages just like that. Transcend the limitations of desire
and attention and energy in each moment, in each stage. The
stages are not there to be fulfilled, they are there to be
transcended, but you become so enamored of the consoling
experiences of each stage that you make a lifetime or
lifetimes out of each one. That is what mankind is doing by
tendency, you see, not merely all of you. My consideration
with you is radical. Those stages through which mankind is
slowly evolving, even as forms have evolved on earth, are
not an end in themselves, are not the purpose of existence –
they are there to be transcended, not to be
fulfilled.

Therefore, if you practice the Way
most directly and fully with great seriousness, you will
transcend the motives associated with each stage directly
and in a finite period of time. Thus, the movement from
Friend of The Laughing Man Institute through the sixth stage
of membership in The Free Communion Church should be direct
and quick. Not a weekend, not a year, but a few years – that
is all. Many of you have already been associated with me and
this Way long enough that by now you could have taken up
responsibility for the seventh stage of life. It is not a
badge of status. You see the way the world thinks about
religion – that is how you think about it as well, as if
suddenly you are worthy of praise because you are an
Enlightened personality. That is not the purpose or function
or real result of Enlightenment, you see. Enlightenment is
an end in itself. The clarification, the responsibility, the
fullness of Transcendental enjoyment that it permits is its
value, and these are not things that the ego attains. It is
simply a matter of inherence in That which exists eternally,
and which already exists conditionally. Enlightenment simply
makes it possible for all of that to function, to be, and to
be real. That is all that Enlightenment is. So few people
enter such a stage of responsibility that whenever one does,
or is reported to have done so, all the irresponsible people
on earth want to make much of it, or make nothing of it
perhaps, but it is thought of as a kind of attainment or as
an anomaly, a badge of some sort.

When I speak of the seventh stage of
life, I am speaking about the assumption of responsibility
for what simply is the case even now. I am not speaking of
an attainment for which you should be congratulated.
Therefore, in my recent discussions with you I have been
speaking primarily about this fault-the refusal to accept
responsibility for what you have been given. I am not
suggesting that all of a sudden people should claim
advancement that is not true of them. I have criticized this
tendency on the part of some people to imagine spiritual
attainments, this need for attention that is typical of all
egos. I am not suggesting that that is all right and that
now you should all say you are FCC 6 or Crazy Wisdom
Fellowship members, you see. I am calling you to examine
your refusal to be responsible for what you are given and
your refusal to apply the Teaching to the present moment of
your existence. You must cut through the limitations of your
present stage of life and practice literally cut through
them, at the root, undermine them, be free of those
limitations! It is not a matter of perfection. It is a
matter of standing Free. It is not a matter of perfecting
the body-mind. It is a matter of Communing with That which
is already Perfect, Transcendental, and Free. It is a matter
of responsibility. Everything that can grant you such
responsibility is given for free. It is already there. The
Grace is given. The Teaching is given. But what will you do
with it?

You are tending to function like
mankind at large, which is destroying the world, destroying
human life and all life. That is how you are tending to
function. That is what that mind is that you are always
contemplating-constant thinking. That mind is destroying the
world and making you unhappy. You must consider its
expression everywhere, not just in mental terms, but
emotionally, socially, physically, functionally,
altogether-and cut through it, surrender beyond it,
understand and transcend it by one or the other of the two
basic approaches. You must transcend these limits of
immaturity and self-possession. The Teaching is
fundamentally a radical one. It is a radical consideration
that enables you to cut through the limits of egoity in each
of the first six stages of life.

If you are truly hearing Me, truly
responding, truly serious about this matter, you will show
the evidence of cutting through it. However, you are all
waiting to be perfect examples of the first three stages of
life, and then a perfect saint in the fourth stage of life,
and then a perfect mystic in the fifth stage of life, an
then a perfect sage in the sixth stage of life, and then
someday in the distant future or in some lifetime, perhaps
billions of years from now, you will be a perfectly
Enlightened bodhisattva in the seventh stage of life, and go
out the bright doorway at the end of it. You are adding time
to the matter, and that is the business of egoity! It is not
a matter of perfecting these conditional manifestations or
stages of egoity, it is a matter of transcending the ego in
the context of each of the stages. When you transcend egoity
in the context of one stage of life, the next stage, the
next level of phenomena, appears automatically. It is for
this reason that I have said that when you have fulfilled
the discipline of one stage you will already show some of
the evidence of the following stage. This is among the kinds
of evidence that should be observed when somebody is
applying for a transition from one stage
to another. The rite of passage from one stage to another is
based on cutting through the limits of egoity in the context
of an earlier stage of life. It is not a matter of having
perfected yourself in that context. On the contrary – it is
a matter of transcending yourself in that context. If you do
so, certain kinds of experiences arise, and as they arise;
you practice. Likewise in the context of your daily
life.

True devotional recognition of Me
is devotional Communion with Me As I Am. Merely to perceive
Me as a physical Entity, and to be moved to respond to Me in
some conventionally devotionalistic sense, is not true
devotional recognition of Me. When you truly devotionally
recognize Me, your devotional relationship to Me cuts
through the “root” of egoity. Such is the
“radical” devotional relationship to Me. And, by
cutting through the “root” of egoity, the
“radical” devotional relationship to Me leads
directly (and in due course) to the only-by-Me Revealed and
Given “Perfect Practice” of the
“Radical” Reality-Way of Adidam
Ruchiradam.

Aletheon

Whatever your stage of life, you
will naturally maintain certain kinds of discipline without
any effort. Certain kinds of signs will appear in your
ordinary living. But they are not a matter of perfection.
They are the evidence of one who understands, or one who is
surrendered beyond the bondage of egoic dramatization.
Therefore, cleaning up the planet requires much more than
the interventions of government and technology. Mankind must
awaken and respond to a greater view, transcend mind in its
egoic ordinariness, transcend all of the culture and
politics in society and technology created by the imposition
of un-Enlightened egoic consciousness. That is a great
project. Is anything like that likely to happen? Really? Do
you imagine it is going to happen? Do you think there is
going to be a community to consider this matter five hundred
years from now on this Earth? You really believe so, eh? I
think it is a throw of the dice, a possibility. The mass of
those who call themselves human beings now may be working
out their destiny in some other subtle space by
then.

The ego is destructive. The ego is
Narcissus. Make a whole world out of that and what do you
think will happen? And that is merely in addition to the
inherent suffering of conditional existence. Conditional
existence is not one-sided. It is not just potential
pleasure. There is always the opposite of everything.
Pleasure is possible if you are lucky, but there is a lot
more that is frustrating and painful, and it is all coming
to an end. All of this is in place even before you begin
making life complex with your human devices. Even in the
case of Enlightenment you still exist for the time being in
the framework of conditional existence, recognizing it,
Free. You are Established in the Divine Nature, the Divine
Self-Condition, yes, but the body is still a body in this
space here, subject to all of its changes.

Look at what a bet you have made.
Look at yourself in your clinging to conditional existence,
your clinging to your human life. Why are you clinging to
it, when even a moment’s consideration ought to enable you
to realize that you do not truly exist in this form but
Stand always Beyond it in the Transcendental Space of
Consciousness? That Realization, most primitively grasped,
could vanish your attention from everything gross and subtle
and conditional, but of course you are not tending toward
that Realization because your attention is already committed
to this condition, this body that you have apparently been
born into. Why are you attached to it? I would say it is
sex. That is basically it. That is why I have had to
consider it with you all for so long-not meaning sex merely
in the sense of genital intercourse, although that is a
major instrument you have for exercising this motivation-but
the intense pleasure in the body that you are attracted to,
and which you read in primarily sexual terms.

There is no other pleasure you
experience in the body that holds a candle to sexual
excitation and orgasm-not one. That is it! That is the
primary pleasure, the principle of pleasure. It is exercised
through the sexual mechanism, and that opportunity is the
reason you are attached to the body. Of course, Nature has
guaranteed this motivation for its own reasons. It is part
of the reproductive mechanism for keeping forms duplicating
themselves. You, however, read it as intensity of enjoyment.
You even read it as happiness. As a result, you are always
trying to re-achieve it. Well, that one commitment, that
simple identification with the body for the teenager, but in
infancy-has caused you to buy everything that the body can
potentially experience. Thus, in order to be able to
exercise this possibility of intense enjoyment primarily
through sex, you have bought death, disease, old age,
separation, pain, frustration, every imaginable obligation,
every kind of inconvenience, convenience, all of it! You
have bought it all. And really, the only reason you were
interested in it to begin with was because you wanted to
experience intense pleasure. That is really the only reason.
If there were not the capacity for intense pleasure, who
would be interested in persisting in this form? You would be
easily moved beyond it.

There is a pulse, an energy, in the
body, and while you are youthful and have various capacities
to move about and so forth, in other words to exercise
yourself through desire, you feel that this motivation
toward pleasure is logical and can be accomplished. The
longer you live, however, the more experience you have, the
more the totality of things impinges itself on you, the less
comfortable you become with this whole matter of being
identified with the body, and at last you forget why you
identified with it to begin with. Moreover, the survival
needs of individuals, of groups, and of the State intervene,
and propagandize all the time against that very pleasure.
The very reason that human beings are attached to being in
the body is exactly what the State opposes through all of
its propaganda. The State, which is the voice of mankind’s
collective survival motivations, is seeking survival through
order, and therefore from the State’s point of view the
principle of intense personal pleasure must be overcome.
Therefore, survival demands at the most ordinary level are
creating a voice in the world that constantly suggests to
you that you must give up the motive of pleasure, of
identification with the body, which is the only reason you
are interested in surviving to begin with! And now for the
sake of survival you are being asked to give it
up.

In truth, yes, this motivation to
pleasure must be observed, must be understood, must be
transcended. It must be transcended, not eliminated in the
strategic sense, but transcended in the Great Reality. The
Great Purpose is the reason for intelligently addressing the
matter of pleasure, or the matter of sexuality-whereas you
have received negative suggestions of every kind all your
life about pleasure, about sexuality, very often through the
voice of religion, and you think all of that sex-negativity
has something to do with God-Realization. It has nothing to
do with it! As a result, you are very complicated about this
matter of pleasure, and you are debilitated in your capacity
to even observe this fundamental motive.

You are unable to dismiss the world
as a dreamlike vision, which is really all it is. Why can’t
you just fall out of it into God? It is because you are
interested in this possibility of intense conditional
pleasure. You are intensely focused on it. Yet all the
purposes of survival are impinging on that purpose of
enjoyment. You did not come here merely to survive, but
having chosen to identify with the body, you bought the
survival game also. Therefore, you have bought the taboos,
the social impositions, the propaganda against pleasure-and
have thereby undermined the very purpose for which you
became identified with this body to begin with.

Since you are so interested in
intense enjoyment, investigate the matter! What exactly is
intense enjoyment? Find out exactly where there is intense
enjoyment. Where is Happiness itself, fullness of Being,
Free and Blissful? You are committed to that-that is why you
identify with the body-but you have bought so much
negativity along with it, are so bewildered by it, that you
cannot even investigate this fundamental matter. And of
course you must investigate it if you are to Realize the
Truth. You likewise must participate, at the basic level of
responsibility, in the survival motives of mankind, the
motives of social order and so forth, which are reasonable
enough up to a point. However, you must also go beyond that.
You must enter into a much more profound consideration than
the ordeal of collective survival. You are not doing that
particularly well, because you are still functioning on the
basis of this original, uninspected commitment, which is
fundamentally sexual. Sex is the means whereby you acquire
this intense whole body oblivion of pleasure. That is why
you are frantically involved in it.

You are all homely human survivors,
you see, being calmly married as if there were no great
intensity involved in your motivations to have done that.
But I know that is exactly why you are in these situations
here. And you are not even all that successful in your
choices to develop such enjoyment-you are always talking
about all the problems of your personal sexual
experiences-your problem, your spouse’s problem, all of it,
you see.

You are always looking forward to
the next intense pleasure. Even sex is a kind of eliminative
pleasure. It is an eliminative exercise whereby you throw
off body chemistry and energy. You relax the knots in the
body-mind through orgasm, but in the process you merely
deplete the mechanism and the knots return. Then you deplete
them again, trying to empty yourself of the pain of desire.
Well, carrying out that technique for a lifetime is one of
the reasons that human beings die! There are many reasons
individuals die when they do, but progressive depletion,
emptying oneself without regeneration, without conserving
one’s energy or bodily chemistry, is certainly one of them.
Not only is the whole Earth in trouble because of all of its
exploitation of the environment, but you are in trouble as
an individual. You personally are in trouble, everyone is in
trouble, and everyone has been in trouble all along. It is
just that you have been desensitized to the reality of
it.

Look at human beings and how they
function. Do you think this is all a matter of decision?
Intelligence? Conscious participation? Look at what
everybody does! It is as automatic as what apparent beings
do in a dream. It is just happening. There is nothing
conscious or intentional about it ultimately. You are
enchanted, the whole mass of beings here is enchanted, and
humanity on Earth is enchanted in a unique sense.
Enchantment is not exclusively associated with happy
round-faced places full of flowers, you see. Enchantment is
also associated with dreadful happenings-pain and sorrow,
fear and anger. To be enchanted is to exist in an automatic
state, a state that goes on and on and on, on its own. You
think that you are participating in this state consciously
and intentionally. I don’t believe it! It is just something
you think. It is another characteristic of your mind, which
is itself an automaticity, the result of an automatic
gesture.

Everything is simply arising. You
could be conscious, you could be intelligent, you could
inspect it, you could become responsible, you could
transcend it, but you are not tending to do that. Only the
Native Being can respond and be quickened to the Divine
Presence, to the Master and the Teaching. Then perhaps you
can be Awakened, become conscious. That is my Purpose in my
interactions with all of you, but you are not tending to
hear Me. You are not tending to practice. You are willing to
imitate religion and more or less automatically imitate
certain features of the exercises associated with this Way,
but I am talking about conscious participation in the
Divine, cutting through these mechanical limitations
directly, in every moment, literally cutting through
them.

I was speaking of sexuality as a
root motive, an expression of the fundamental motive toward
pleasure in the body. I am not suggesting that you must
become the enemy of sexuality, making a problem of it and
spending your life trying to avoid it or eliminate it-no!
Practice Divine Communion. Grant your attention to the Great
Reality. You need not make a problem out of sex or any other
Divine Communion and allow that Awakened Consciousness to
shine in and relate to conditions, transform them. It is not
a matter of perfecting them, nor is it a matter of
strategically eliminating human functions, human
experiences, even pleasurable ones, even sexuality. It is
not necessary to make pleasure into an enemy. That is
another dull, stupid human motivation, based on uninspected
egoity, just another strategy of survival that the ego cooks
up Narcissus in his hair suit. That is not it!

Perhaps none or very few of you will
respond to this radical consideration. Nobody really has
yet, so I am not all that hopeful about it. You have my Dawn
Horse Testament, which is the total spectrum of
consideration in summary and accounts for all kinds of
people. Still, the essence of the Teaching is most radical.
Will you be most radical in your application of it? That is
the question, you see, and in my observation of everyone
over the years, I have observed that that radical approach
to this practice is not typical. Not at all. How do you
think there got to be such a massive Teaching? Initially I
wrote The Knee of Listening, opened up a storefront, and
began to talk and sit with people. The original Teaching was
presented in just that simple, most direct, radical form,
but a larger, expanded Teaching, covering all possibilities
and all details, developed over fifteen years in
conversation with others. After that period I summarized the
consideration in The Dawn Horse Testament, but my
fundamental consideration with you has always been radical.
I have observed that you do not tend to respond to that
consideration, but I am not going to bury it. It is in the
Testament itself, and I will always look for that rare
individual who may move rather quickly through the stages. I
will always look for people to truly understand me and bear
down with this consideration and cut through these mediocre
stages of semi-application of my Instruction that you call
practice.

The Self-Nature is inherently pure,
inherently Free. It does not need to be worked toward – it
needs to be Realized directly. Realize it directly and you
need not go about self-improvement, you need not plod
through the six stages. You need not do any of that crap
anymore. Wake up and stand Free and live on that basis. It
is not a badge. It is not grounds for becoming a famous ego.
It is nothing of the kind. It is Freedom itself. It is
God-Realization, Transcendental Awareness, full Awakening to
Reality Itself, transcending the illusions, the deluding
power of mind, the illusions of conditional existence, the
illusions associated with basic identification with the
body, and the whole complex of illusory human mind. All of
that must be observed and transcended in a flash of insight,
not removed. In that flash of insight you Realize the
Ground, the Nature of Nature, the Seat of it, the Condition
in which it is arising. You do not eliminate these
modifications-you Realize the Source of these modifications
and Stand as That.

Religious people talk about God as
reflected in the world, as an expression of the Divine –
“God is the world” and so forth. If God is the world, God is
you! Therefore, to Realize God you must Realize the Nature
of Nature, the Source in place, the Source of your own
presumptions, the Source of your own mind, of body
awareness, the Source of Being, the Well of Being, the
Consciousness in which this is arising and vanishing. Even
mind is not a continuum, it is merely something arising and
going away, arising and going away. Watch where it arises.
Watch where it goes away. That is it! That is the Source of
the Enlightenment of the Chinese Patriarchs¹ –
that Realization, that penetrating insight. On the basis of
it you develop the expression of Enlightened existence,
unless, having had a couple of moments of insight, you get
caught up in all kinds of doctrine and purposes and more
illusions and grant importance to that and become
double-minded again with your preferences and your
versions.

1. The Chinese Patriarchs
were a lineage of Ch’an Buddhist Realizers that developed in
China with the arrival of Bodhidharma from India around A.D.
520. Although Hui Neng, who died in A.D. 713, was the sixth
and last of the formal Patriarchs, he had five great
disciples who continued the lineage of transmission. Several
of these Patriarchs and their spiritual heirs are among the
“Great Individuals” mentioned by Master Da as His likenesses
in The Dawn Horse Testament.

If you constantly Realize the Source
and Stand as it, that is Enlightenment, Liberation. To do so
does not move anything, it does not perfect anyone! It
transcends all the stages of the progressive transcendence
of the ego. It accomplishes them all in an instant. You must
endure the progression of practice, with some of this
insight serving you, for as long as it takes in your case.
That is it. That is what you must do. But whoever you are
and whatever stage of practice you are in, you could cut
deeper. You could get to the Source more directly. You could
practice more profoundly. You can always do that. Hearing me
on this point does not mean that all of a sudden you are
going to raise your hand and say you are ready for the
seventh stage of life. No, it is a great matter, a profound
Realization, and to Realize it means that you Realize that
you Stand in a Place without a bottom or a top. It has no
shape. It has no body or mind. It is utterly vanished of
size and shape and relations. Some have called it a void,
trying to suggest what it is like. There is nothing to stand
on, nothing to hold on to.

The ego, the psycho-physical
personality, does not want to hear anything about such a
state. It is what egos think death is! You are not
interested in death, and therefore you are not interested in
Enlightenment really. You are not interested in Reality,
because it is the same thing that you think death is and you
do not want that. You are trying to build a great wall
against death through experiencing, through identification
with the body-mind, through thinking. You are trying to
prevent yourself from enduring that apparent emptiness,
whereas if you stepped beyond that through great insight,
you would realize it is not a void, not a great emptiness.
It is Fullness itself. All of this is It. It is Divine. It
is infinitely, inherently Free and Blissful. You will not
discover that, however, until you have no other
alternatives, and you fall out of this illusion of thinking
and practicing. Do you have any idea what I am talking
about?

In the Vedanta Temple, the permanent
Realization of That took place.² It never changed
after that. It has not changed since then. It is never going
to change. It cannot change! It was essentially the same
realization that had occurred many times in my life, but now
the fullest awareness of it altogether was permanently
Realized. The Divine Condition itself is the unique
characteristic of this Realization, and it is permanent. It
cannot change. It is not based on anything
conditional.

2. Master Da is speaking
of His entrance into Sahaj Samadhi, or unqualified identity
with the Radiant Transcendental Being-Consciousness Itself,
which took place in your consciousness corresponds. All of
conditional existence, even your own body, persists, but it
is all at the perimeter of this Infinite Well. Imagine that
you are situated in a well, or in an immense space, and that
that is your consciousness, and that your body is visible to
you on the horizon. It is hard to say how far off it is – a
mile? Twenty thousand miles? It is hard to say. You have
such extraordinary vision and you still can perceive and
sense it, but it is peripheral, it is just arising, and you
in no way differentiate it from this Well of Infinite
Being.

Since that perfect Awakening I have
endured and experienced every kind of change in the
body-mind, including profundities of a yogic nature. All
kinds of extraordinary things have occurred in this
body-mind and through it. Still, the Realization has never
changed. The high matters, the ordinary matters, the
ordinary thoughts, everything – none of it has changed that
Realization. Nothing can change It. There is no
identification whatsoever with the conditional state,
absolutely none. Conditional states continue entirely on
their own and are completely recognizable. They are not
becoming perfect.

There are extraordinary things
associated with this person you see before you, but on the
other hand, there are hairy legs, and eyes, and all the rest
of it. All that is arising, and it is simply, utterly
recognizable. Conditions are not a limit that obstruct the
Realization of Reality at all! Can you imagine such a
Consciousness? I can make metaphors about it: Imagine
existing in a formless space to which your consciousness
corresponds. All of conditional existence, even your own
body, persists, but it is all at the perimeter of this
Infinite Well. Imagine that you are situated in a well, or
in an immense space, and that that is your consciousness,
and that your body is visible to you on the horizon. It is
hard to say how far off it is – a mile? Twenty thousand
miles? It is hard to say. You have such extraordinary vision
and you still can perceive and sense it, but it is
peripheral, it is just arising, and you in no way
differentiate it from this Well of Infinite
Being.

That is one way of describing it. It
is something like that. What I am describing, however, is
not something that is outside your experience. That
Condition is exactly so for you now. Exactly so. You are
exactly in that Place now and it is the same Place. It is
not your own personal infinity. It is the only Infinity, the
only Well. However, conditional perception still arises, and
you are apparently, mysteriously, related to a specific
individual form in the midst of this mess of positive and
negative suffering, and interest, and pleasure. You sit in
that same Space even now. It does not make any difference
what arises, pleasurably or painfully, in the body or in the
environment or in mind-you are aware of it, are you not? You
are aware of all of it, then. There is no subjective portion
of it that you are, and from which position are aware of
everything. You are aware of all of it. You observe every
thought. You observe the sensations in the body, pleasurable
or painful. You observe the relations of the body, the
relations of the mind. You observe these. Now what is that
position? What is its nature? What position are you actually
in now? Right now! You! Right now. What kind of state are
you in, observing all of this? Experience that State. First
notice that you are only observing everything, but then
become aware of that State. How big is that State? Where is
it? Who is it? What difference do all these words make? It
is so! That is it!

All of your efforts and puzzling and
questions and thinking are based on having identified with
the periphery. Make that identification and then existence
is complex. But it is an imaginary gesture, the kind of
thing you may do in a dream. It is an enchanted occupation.
In Reality, you are always in the same Position, and it is
Transcendental, Infinite, and Free. It is all Energy and all
Consciousness. Everything that arises conditionally is just
an apparent play on It. There is not anything separate from
it, not anything binding. Everything is inherently
recognizable by Consciousness Itself. That is your very
Position.

Perhaps in this moment you are
having a satori of some kind about it or enjoying some sort
of intimacy with it, but Realization itself, which is the
origin of the seventh stage of life, is a matter of this
Intuition becoming natural, inherent, and permanent, so that
there is never any movement out of that Condition. Never!
You cannot move out of it. How is it possible? That is just
the way it is. It is the way it IS! You are always presuming
a position based on enchantment, on another state. You blink
at the horizon and the next moment you are standing there!
On the horizon you leave the Well behind you. Instead, stand
in the Well always. Clear your perception. See it as
peripheral. Stand just There. In effect, without
strategically making an effort in that direction, that is
what practice is about-becoming established through Divine
Communion in the Inherent Condition.

You are presently bound and deluded
by your energies, your thoughts, and so forth, and as a
result you tend to conceive of this practice as something
that takes place in the context of the body mind. You
conceive of the practice as a process that begins by
listening and hearing, and receiving the Blessing of the
Spirit Presence, then submitting to that Presence bodily,
letting the Current be felt moving through the frontal line
and then up the spinal line and so on. The progression of
the stages seems natural to you, but by conceiving of it in
those terms, you are like a person in a dream trying to run
in sand while being chased by a monster. You think that you
are going to accomplish all of those stages by persisting in
the view you are presently holding on to, but in fact you do
not accomplish the stages. You do not move at all! You do
not progress through the stages. There is no effort that
accomplishes the stages.

How, then, does a person make
transitions between the stages? On the basis of submission,
fundamental understanding, and intuition of the Divine
Condition that makes it no longer a struggle to be
associated with the previous conditions. Now there are new
conditions, also new desires. You fumble around with them
until this same position of inherence arises naturally,
either through enquiry, re-cognition, or surrender. Until
you have understood or surrendered fully to That which is
Perfect, there is an endless stream of instruction, endless
conversation. And when there is Realization itself, when
these conversations have accomplished their purpose, then we
can continue to talk with one another, but that talk is
basically all small talk then. Even the highest dharma
consideration is just “how do you do?” Don’t you
think?

DEVOTEES: Yes.

MASTER DA: You do? Pity. You
are always ready to resort to mind, always ready to pollute
another river, always ready to throw another fart into the
sky. All this progress, conceived either in terms of
spiritual culture or in terms of technological worldly
society-what is all this “progressing” doing anyway? It is
polluting the world and confusing mankind. Well, you must
understand that progress does the same thing in your own
place. The Way is not about progress. It is about
penetration of the insult of your own illusion. Don’t you
see? There is nothing I can do about it. That is it. You
will do it the way you want. If you want to take six billion
lifetimes and six more stages that is your
business.

Various forms of radical Teaching
have been presented to at least some of mankind for
thousands of years. It has not changed the world yet, and
most people are not spiritual practitioners in any high
sense at all. It is not that God selects a few to
Enlighten-great Enlightened beings are God, are
expressions of Divine Intervention. Beings in general are
un-Illumined because of their own purposes. Illumination has
been presented to you all night and day for a good portion
of your life already, by me. In the case of many of you, it
has been an option in every breath for the better part of a
decade. Then why are you not Awake? It has something to do
with you, not with me.

I presume my Teaching Work to be
full, because there is no impediment in the Teaching, no
impediment in me or my Work. If humanity is not Awake yet,
it is not because the Teaching has not been given. If my
devotees are not Awake yet, it is not because I have not
Worked True in their company. It is simply the natural lag
of egoity, and it is up to you to decide how important the
matter is. I need not destroy myself to make a point. Either
it is important to you or it is not. Either you will
practice most profoundly or you will not. If you choose a
mediocre life based on attachments and arrangements with
conditions, then that is your choice. It is not damnation.
It is just what it is-ordinariness, suffering in the midst
of conditional existence. If you choose that, then that is
what you get! God Bless you! In my view it’s a bad bet, but
it is your business.

If you think there is some virtue in
continuing to base your practice on identification with the
body-mind, then that is your business. I have done
everything I can and by merely persisting, merely Being, I
will continue to do everything I can, but I see no reason to
enter into that struggle by identifying with you as I have
in the past. Now it is up to you. It is your responsibility
to practice and it is the responsibility of devotees to
maintain this Teaching consideration and this institution.